Rocky Mountain Institute expands Community Solar across the country – The article is a good read because it gives guidelines on how to get better pricing for community solar projects. The main drivers – get a competitive RFP versus a single quote (and write the RFP well!), bundle your project with up to 20MW of other projects, increase contract length, and work with utilities when placing the system. RMI was able to work pricing down from 8.5¢/kWh to as low as 5¢/kWh – a 40% savings. I agree with this model – its easier said than done to collect and organize 20MW, but it happens.

India’s powergrid getting $500M to upgrade transmission – The Asian Development Bank is putting the money up. I am sure the government of India is backing the loan, and I’m betting that the solar developers who are hoping to build 40GW of solar are going to be paying off the loan at a rate of around 0.1¢ to 1.0¢/kWh to transport their electricity from the fields to the cities. What’s more important than anything though – this is being built and the machines and expertise to create this type of hardware will grow globally.